Savez wrote:The average slave owner did not own 8 - 15 slaves. I'm not sure I understand your numbers...38,645 slave owners in Kentucky compared to 22,033 in Louisiana.

Well, let’s just take Kentucky and Louisiana since you already provided the numbers of slave owners. According to the 1860 census there were 225,483 and 331,726 slaves in each state respectively. That means that in Kentucky the average number of slaves per owner was 225,483/38,645 = 5.83. In Louisiana the average was 331,726/22,033 = 15.

Savez wrote:Also if you want to count numbers. The number of slaveholding families in Kentucky is larger than the number of slave holding families in Louisiana. 38,645 slave owners in Kentucky compared to 22,033 in Louisiana.

You are confounding the number of slaveholding families with the number of individual slave owners. Nevertheless, even looking at families, 23% owned slaves in Kentucky compared with 29% in Louisiana. More significant still is that slaves constituted only 20% of Kentucky’s population but 47% of Louisiana’s.

Hellcat wrote: Joel Smith wrote:History being what it is we, as in United States citizens, tend to think of the war monolithically in terms of a block of good versus a block of evil.

That seems to be how the war is taught to us from an early age in school. I've lived up and down the east coast from just a few weeks of age (yes, just a few weeks of age, I was born in California and we moved back east when I was like two or three weeks old). We moved from NC to New England just before my 12th birthday and I had kids taunting me because of my accent and because I'd come from down South. The South was taught to them as being something to be hated for the watr and the North to be lauded for winning the war. So they felt the need to pick on this Southern boy as being from the South and thus being illiterate in comparison to them. They did get surprised when I knew more on certain subjects than they did and wasn't the illiterate they expected.
i had a similiar experience when I moved from alabama top cleveland Ohio when i was 10 or so...

JG6789 wrote: Savez wrote:Also if you want to count numbers. The number of slaveholding families in Kentucky is larger than the number of slave holding families in Louisiana. 38,645 slave owners in Kentucky compared to 22,033 in Louisiana.

You are confounding the number of slaveholding families with the number of individual slave owners. Nevertheless, even looking at families, 23% owned slaves in Kentucky compared with 29% in Louisiana. More significant still is that slaves constituted only 20% of Kentucky’s population but 47% of Louisiana’s.
Hank C. wrote...

That fairly sums up the entire secession experience. A small number lead the party, state, region and country to destruction.

If 6% makes such a differnce then why couldn't that small minority get Kentucky to leave the Union? Or Missouri for that matter. Maryland provided many good naval officers for the Confederacy several of which were not slave owners.

Also most slave owners have families. My point is you can't take the total population and divide it against the number of slave owners. For example if you did that with Alabama someone could say that only 6% of Alabamians owned slaves. You have to do it by families and even then it isn't very accuarate.

Savez wrote: JG6789 wrote:Savez wrote:And again the average slave owner did not own 8-15 slaves.

Parse it however you like, that was, in fact, the average number of slaves per owner.

No, no it wasn't.

Maybe you didn't read this:

"Well, let’s just take Kentucky and Louisiana since you already provided the numbers of slave owners. According to the 1860 census there were 225,483 and 331,726 slaves in each state respectively. That means that in Kentucky the average number of slaves per owner was 225,483/38,645 = 5.83. In Louisiana the average was 331,726/22,033 = 15."